Biographical

Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) in 1944 became the third woman elected to the Academy. In the 1940s and 1950s McClintock's work on the cytogenetics of maize led her to theorize that genes are transposable -- they can move around -- on and between chromosomes. McClintock drew this inference by observing changing patterns of coloration in maize kernels over generations of controlled crosses.

The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, and it serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with more than 126 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include nearly 19 million books, 2.6 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 56 million manuscripts.

There are three principal modes of accessing the manuscript: Folio pages can either be reached via the list of folio pages, covering folio pages 33 to 196 (see the description of the content of the manuscript), via indices of words, numbers, and variables, or via related propositions of the Discorsi.

A comprehensive knowledge of the geoscience of the Canadian landmass and its offshore is fundamental to economic development, public safety, environmental protection and national sovereignty. To acquire, interpret and make available that information to all Canadians is the mission of the Geological Survey of Canada.

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This Canadian site includes a long essay detailing the history of the Geological Survey of Canada. Also included in the site is a section devoted to the life and work of William Logan, one of Canada's most historically important scientists and the namesake of Canada's highest mountain. The site includes information about Logan in his role as founder of Canada's Geological Survey and provides information about the Logan manuscript archives. This site will be of most interest to historians of geology and exploration.

The Museum of the History of Science houses an unrivalled collection of historic scientific instruments in the world's oldest surviving purpose-built museum building, the Old Ashmolean on Broad Street, Oxford. By virtue of the collection and the building, the Museum occupies a special position, both in the study of the history of science and in the development of western culture and collecting.

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The Oxford University Museum of Natural History has a large quantity of Entomological, Geological, Mineralogical and Zoological specimens (nearly 4,000,000 in total). Some of these collections are on-line and others include images and bibliographical essays on their collectors. The Museum includes a library with a collection of thousands of rare natural history books, and hosts a number of on-line exhibits. Essays on various permanent exhibitions and a full text article by Keith Thomson about the Thomas Huxley-William Wilberforce debate round out this collection. Researchers of natural history will find this site to be valuable.

Henry Bernard Davis Kettlewell (1907-1979) was an outstanding lepidopterist and geneticist, best known for his work on industrial melanism in the Lepidoptera which illustrates evolution in action. He is also well known as an enthusiastic field worker and as a popularizer of science, and was co-founder of the Rothschild-Cockayne-Kettlewell Collection of Lepidoptera (now National Collection RCK) in the British Museum of Natural History.

The papers of James Gerald Crowther, for some time scientific correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. The papers cover the period 1920-1974, and focus on scientific journalism and politics. There is an associated collection of books (c. 500 items).

October 1993 marked the 100th anniversary of Liverpool Astronomical Society taking possession of the 5"inch Cooke equatorial telescope. Which at present is still situated in the observatory on the roof of the (NMGM) Liverpool Museum.

Alhough there were occasional reports of new or guest stars in all cultures through the ages, medeval western astronomers looked at the "fixed" stars as eternal and invariable entities. This view was blown up in a dramatic show by Tycho's supernova ("Stella Nova", "New Star") in 1572. Soon after, some more variable stars were discovered, including the first periodic one, Mira (the periodicity of which was only discovered considerably later in 1638, by Holwarda; up to this time the four known variables had all been classified as "Stellae Novae", although none of them was actually a nova).

Brewing magnate and amateur astronomer William Lassell. designed and built the huge telescope from his Liverpool home. With its 24 inch metal mirror, it was the most powerful telescope in England when it was completed in 1845. Now, 150 years later, the project to rebuild the telescope is the result of a special collaboration between a private sector company, two Liverpool universities and National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside (NMGM).